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Whale Beachings

''Nearly 200 pilot whales stranded in New Zealand''
13 February 2015 Last updated at 18:05 GMT

 
Dead whale washes up on Kent beach
Experts believe 36ft carcass found at Foreness Point is a minke whale
Press Association
Wednesday 14 October 2015 14.52 BST
VIDEO

A dead whale has been found washed up on a beach in Kent.
The cetacean, believed to be a 36ft-long (11 metre) minke whale, was discovered at Foreness Point, near Cliftonville, on Wednesday morning.

Experts from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) plan to take samples from the dead creature, which has a police cordon around it.
“The animal has been floating off the Kent coast for a couple of days and shows signs of being hit by a ship,” said a spokesperson for the Natural History Museum, in London.

It is understood that it will be up to Kent county council to dispose of the carcass, once samples have been taken for testing by ZSL veterinarians.

Julia Cable, of the East Sussex-based British Divers Marine Life Rescue, said: “It looks like an 11-metre long adult minke whale, but it is difficult to say with certainty without seeing the underside of it.”
Minke whales have an estimated lifespan of up to 50 years, and are found from the tropics to the near-freezing waters of the northern hemisphere.

Considered to be generally solitary mammals, minke whales can swim at up to 13mph. Their diet includes a variety of fish, including herring and whiting, as well as plankton.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/14/dead-whale-washes-up-on-kent-beach

Foreness Point is between Margate and North Foreland.
 
Dolphins suspected in whale attack off Skye

Marine wildlife experts believe dolphins attacked a young pilot whale which was found stranded on a beach in Skye.
Vets had to put down the badly injured three-year-old female calf, which was discovered on Tuesday at Dunvegan.
Teeth marks were found on the whale's body, flippers and dorsal fin.
The Scottish Marine Animals Stranding Scheme and Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust (HWDT) suspect the calf was attacked by bottlenose dolphins.

HWDT said it was awaiting a final report following a post-mortem examination of the whale.
Dr Conor Ryan, the trust's sightings and strandings officer, said: "If indeed bottlenose dolphins were to blame, this is only the second such case that we are aware of in the UK.
"Pilot whales often strand dead and occasionally alive on our coasts, but rarely with these types of injuries."

Scotland is home to the world's most northerly resident population of bottlenose dolphins.
On the east coast, they feed and breed the Moray Firth and North Sea.

Charlie Phillips, a Whale and Dolphin Conservation field officer, said the injuries may have been caused while the dolphins and whale were playing, or inflicted in an act of aggression.
He said: "Dolphins and whales do interact in the marine environment and this is part and parcel of their natural behaviour.
"Dolphins are wonderful creatures but people should remember that they are not these fluffy cartoon characters, they have a dark side too."

Mr Phillips said the spacing between the tooth marks on the whale had helped the experts to tell that they had been made by bottlenose dolphins.
Medium-sized gaps indicate bottlenoses, while larger spaces are left by orca and smaller ones by common dolphin.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-34671705
 
Sperm whales beached in Skegness following Hunstanton death

Three dead sperm whales found washed up on a beach in Lincolnshire are "believed to be from the same pod" as a whale which died at Hunstanton.
HM Coastguard said two of the whales were found on a beach near Skegness at about 20:30 GMT on Saturday, while a third was discovered earlier.
The Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme will examine the bodies.

The pod was spotted off the Norfolk coast on Friday before the Hunstanton whale died after becoming stranded.
HM Coastguard said it believed the Skegness and Hunstanton whales to be from the same pod.
It has cordoned off the bodies and is asking the public to keep its distance.
Adam Homes, the RNLI station press officer for Skegness, said the town was "as busy as a bank holiday" as crowds gathered to look at the bodies.

Scientists from the Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme, which coordinates the investigation of all whale, dolphin and porpoise strandings in the UK, will carry out a post-mortem.

Up to five whales were seen at Hunstanton on Friday just before one of them became stranded and, despite efforts to rescue it, died.
Rob Deaville, programme organiser from the Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme, warned the others were also at "considerable risk" of being stranded.
His team has taken samples of skin, blubber, teeth and blood from the Hunstanton whale and will carry out similar tests on the ones at Skegness.
Sperm whales are deep sea animals and do not belong in the shallow waters of the North Sea.
He said: "Every year we get 600 strandings of cetaceans in the UK and a handful, about five or six a year, are sperm whales."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-35395369
 
Beached Skegness sperm whale 'explodes' during post-mortem

One of three sperm whales washed up on a beach has "exploded" during initial examinations by scientists.
Two of the whales were found on a beach near Skegness, Lincolnshire, on Saturday, while a third was discovered on Sunday morning.
Marine biologists were using a probe when there was a "huge blast of air", said BBC reporter David Sykes.

Earlier, the letters CND, with the organisation's logo, were spray-painted on the whale's tail.

All three whales are believed to be from the same pod as a whale which died at Hunstanton.
The pod was spotted off the Norfolk coast on Friday before the Hunstanton whale became stranded and died.

One of the Skegness whales is at the end of Lagoon Walk, with the other two towards Gibraltar Point.
They have been cordoned off to prevent crowds of people touching the carcasses.

The word "fukushima" - presumably a reference to the stricken Japanese nuclear power station - was also written on the side of the whale's body.
CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) said the action was not carried out by by the organisation at a national level, but said it recognised many people have "very strong views on nuclear disarmament".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-35400884
 
They quickly cordoned off the bodies to stop the public touching them, for health and safety reasons obviously, but I wonder if anyone had the idea of doing their own autopsy in the hope of finding ambergris.
 
I know, but it's still illegal to sell it.
AFAIK, the only ivory you can buy/sell these days is mammoth ivory.
 
And antiques with proven provenance, I think.

Anyway, doesn't the monarch get first dibs on anything that washes up on our shores so taking anything from the whale is stealing from 'er Maj?

P.S. did I just make a tautology?
 
Someone must have considered having a slice of tons of free whale steaks as well. If people will eat roadkill....
 
Time-lapse of beached whales being removed from Skegness
[Video]

Three sperm whales which were beached on the Lincolnshire Coast over the weekend have been moved by contractors.
It took workers more than five hours to take them from the beach, wrap them in tarpaulin and put them on to low loaders.
The animals were then taken to a landfill site in Sheffield.

Jan Smith, who is leading the work to remove the 30-tonne animals, said it was a difficult task, but one that staff had dealt with before.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-35425997

More here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-35422380
 
rynner2 said:
Before 1949, I believe. So if you have a baby mammoth in your private zoo, you can't sell its tusks!
Click to expand...
I couldn't do that to little Trunkie anyway. She's already disappointed that we've had no snow here yet this year.
 
Stranded whales provide new clues on the threats to sea creatures’ survival
Ocean giants lying dead on North Sea coasts is a sad event, but it gives marine scientists a valuable chance to detect man-made dangers
Jamie Doward
Saturday 30 January 2016 19.57 GMT

A body washes up on a beach in eastern England. Then another. And another. Soon, people living in two coastal communities have five deaths on their hands.
Things take a further macabre twist when it emerges that more than a dozen bodies are littering the shores of Holland and Germany. What could possibly link the deaths? A CSI team, dispatched to hunt for clues, faces a race against time. Scavengers and saltwater will devour the carcasses and destroy potentially vital evidence.

No, it’s not a plot lifted from the latest series of The Bridge. This is life at the gory end of zoological research. The CSI team are not crime scene investigators, but members of the Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme, a specialist team based at the Zoological Society of London in Regent’s Park, whose work was thrown into sharp relief last week when five sperm whales were found stranded on beaches in Hunstanton, Norfolk, and Skegness, Lincolnshire.
“We weren’t the ones who gave it the name; it’s entirely fortuitous that the initials are CSI,” said Rob Deaville, the programme’s project manager. “But there is a degree of truth in it. You’re trying to find what happened to bodies on a beach.”

Set up in response to a 1988 virus that killed thousands of European seals, the CSIP – cetacean is the collective noun for aquatic placental mammals – is celebrating its 25th year. It continues work begun by the Natural History Museum in 1913 in response to a mass stranding of 50 sperm whales in Cornwall.

Now, with more than a century’s worth of data to draw on, the programme has become a zoological treasure trove. In the quarter of a century it has been operating, the CSIP has recorded almost 13,000 strandings of porpoises, whales, turtles, seals and basking sharks, conducted 3,500 postmortems, and collected 80,000-plus samples.

Funded by the Department for the Environment and the Scottish and Welsh governments, the programme carries out between 100 and 150 post-mortems on the 600 or so strandings that occur each year around the UK shoreline. Selecting which creatures to examine depends on several factors.
“Thankfully, everyone now has camera phones,” Deaville said. “We try to ascertain what it is and ask whether it is in a fresh enough condition. Can we access it safely? Often they are stranded in inaccessible locations.”

In the latest strandings, Deaville and his team were able to examine four of the sperm whales. A fifth was too far out on mudflats which may have been littered with ordnance from a nearby military range. But this was not the only explosive risk to the team, Deaville explained. The whale carcasses, insulated by blubber, were storing a potentially dangerous buildup of gases.
“Sperm whales are like pressure cookers; they keep everything locked in. Two of the ones in Skegness were so distended we were concerned about the risk to us and the public.”

The programme’s chief remit is to establish causes of death, but Deaville said that, as distressing as it is to see the carcass of a whale or porpoise washed up on a beach, much good can come from it. “We use the opportunity to learn more about species which are incredibly hard to study in the wild. The sperm whale is a case in point. They spend a fraction of their life at the surface, most of it at depth. So although it’s a tragic event, it does give us a great chance to collect a range of material.”

This can yield important breakthroughs. An examination of porpoise carcasses found the presence of specialist chemicals used to make sofas flame-retardant. This led to a ban on the chemicals in 2004. Other work has suggested dolphins may be subject to decompression syndrome and that whales are affected by the use of military sonar, research that has led to paradigm shifts in how zoologists think about cetaceans.

etc...

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/30/stranded-whales-opportunities-to-help-marine-life
 
Jim said:
Culprit for some of the stranding. Whales flee from the loud military sonar used by navies to hunt submarines, new research has proven for the first time. The studies provide a missing link in the puzzle that has connected naval exercises around the world to unusual mass standings of whales and dolphins.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jul/03/whales-flee-military-sonar-strandings
Click to expand...
Yep, I've long thought that was the cause.
There's a bit of denial going on about it, which is why it's taken a long time to connect the dots.
 
 
We've got a dead whale on the beach at Hunstanton (although someone else has told me it's at Sheringham) at the moment and locals are starting to complain about the smell I've been told tonight .. oh hang on a minute, it might be at Weybourne after all ..

This from the Eastern Daily Press newspaper today:

MYSTERIOUS SEA CREATURE COULD HOLD THE KEY TO WHALE DEATHS
Alex Hurrell
[email protected]

An enormous sea creature spotted on a north Norfolk beach may explain the rash of recent whale strandings along the east coast.
The mystery find has not been confirmed yet but an experienced fisherman was convinced that it was a giant squid with a body estimated to be between 16ft and 20ft long.
Others speculated that the creature - first seen at Weybourne yesterday afternoon - was the corpse of a Minke whale.
Marine wildlife expert Carl Chapman said, if it was confirmed to be a squid, the creature might hold the key to the reason so many sperm whales have come to grief this month including two that died at Hunstanton.
"This is very important from the point of view of the whale strandings" said Mr Chapman, Norfolk's cetacean recorder and a co-ordinator for the National Sea Watch Foundation. "Squid are not normally associated with the North Sea but they are the prime source of food for sperm whales. If squid have entered the North Sea, it might be that the sperm whales are following them."
Cromer based fisherman Johnny Seago and fellow Weybourne residents Max and Sue Webber were the among the first to spot the animal yesterday.
Mr Seago who has 35 years experience as a fisherman said he was quite sure it was a squid. "This is huge - you would have thought it was a whale until you saw the tentacles and the eye socket."
Mr Seago said with its tentacles, the squid would have measured up to 35 ft.
Mr Webber said the squid was decomposing and missing some of its tentacles but those remaining were between three and six feet long. "It looks like it's got a sparsely - hairy body too. It's grey but not smelly" he added.
Yesterday's discovery came after a reported sighting of another whale off the Norfolk coast. On this occasion it proved to be a false alarm but prompted a major search operation.
The alert was raised yesterday after a member of the public claimed to have seen the whale thrashing about in shallow water close to Mundesley beach.

(I was at Mundesley beach the day before yesterday and we caught two dab and a small sea bass btw :))

anyway .........

Coastguard rescue teams responded with patrols launched between Sea Palling and Overstrand.
The report which was soon circulating on social media led to a large group of onlookers gathering on Mundesley seafront.
The Maritime and Coastguard Agency confirmed the operation was being stood down several hours later after there had been no further sightings of the sea creature.
Meanwhile, the 45ft sperm whale that became stranded on old Hunstanton beach was removed yesterday. The creature died last Thursday night on a section of beach a mile north of the Le Strange Arms.

Blowing them up's a shit idea as well ..

 
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Whale stranded on Perranporth beach dies on the shore
10 July 2016

A female sperm whale stranded on a Cornish beach has died on the shore.
The creature, measuring 40 feet, was discovered on its side in the shallows at Perranporth beach when the tide went out.

Marine specialists said being out of the water for so long would have caused internal injuries and, even if they could refloat her, she would probably not survive.

HM Coastguard were on the scene to manage public safety.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-36759106
 
PHOTOS: Scientists Live Tweet The Postmortem On Cornwall's Stranded Whale
6:01am 12th July 2016

Marine biologists are trying to find out why a washed up whale died on a Cornish beach.
It is after the 40 foot sperm whale beached itself at Perranporth over the weekend. Teams could not save her.
It is thought she might already have been sick before she got stranded.

Now specialist teams are carrying out an investigation, hoping to get to the bottom of the mystery.
Experts from the Institute of Zoology have been at the beach, trying to piece together what happened.
They have been conducting a post mortem - but have had to do it around the tides, which are threatening to carry the huge carcass back out to sea.

They have been live tweeting their investigations and, before you scroll down, be warned that some of the pictures are not for the faint hearted.

....

Abby Crosby, Marine Conservation Officer for Cornwall Wildlife Trust said: "It was a sad end for this amazing whale, but by examining these strandings it at least gives us a chance to investigate these animals properly and learn more about them. And the more we know, the better we're able to fight for their protection".

The public are also urged to report stranded marine wildlife to the Network on their Hotline number, 0345 201 2626, which is monitored every day of the year. For more information on the Marine Stranding Network and its work please see www.cwtstrandings.org.

http://www.piratefm.co.uk/news/late...t-the-postmortem-on-cornwalls-stranded-whale/
 
Sperm whale measuring 50ft washed up on beach during the night
By maxc73 | Posted: September 29, 2016

15585526-large.jpg


A dead sperm whale has washed up on a Devon beach overnight.

UPDATE: Washed-up carcass is a rare fin whale, says expert

Teignbridge District Council has confirmed the huge carcass - said to measure about 50ft - has come ashore at Red Rock beach, between Dawlish Warren and Dawlish.

Coastguards are currently at the scene where the badly decomposed remains of the sea mammal has come to rest.
They will be working with council staff on Thursday to make sure the area is safe and members of the public keep a respectful distance from the cetacean.

http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/spe...ng-the-night/story-29762651-detail/story.html

More pics on page.
On TV just now, it was said the body had been seen at sea before it came ashore, and some people thought it was the upturned hull of a boat.
Now the council is deciding how to dispose of the carcase...
 
Fin whale washed up on beach off Norfolk coast
20 October 2016

A rare 40ft (12m) fin whale has been found dead on a Norfolk beach.
The whale was discovered by wardens at the Holkham National Nature Reserve on the north Norfolk coast.

The Holkham Estate said it believed the animal was a fin whale and the Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme (CSIP) would be carrying out a post-mortem to establish the cause of its death.
Plans were under way to remove the whale from the beach.

For more on the whale and other stories, visit the BBC Norfolk Live page

A spokeswoman said the area remained open "but we advise the public not to venture close to the carcass and to keep dogs on leads".

Images of the whale were taken by bird photographer Penny Clarke, 51, from King's Lynn who was out walking on the beach when she came across the animal.
"It's really sad. It looked really fresh like it had only just washed up. It's an amazing creature, just so sad to see it like this," said Miss Clarke.

A total of 30 sperm whales have died in the North Sea this year.
Six of the sperm whales and a minke were found dead on beaches in Norfolk and Lincolnshire. The others were found beached in France, Germany and the Netherlands.

Dr Peter Evans, director of the Sea Watch Foundation, said they had probably died due to them straying into shallow waters while hunting squid.

Dr Ben Garrod, of Anglia Ruskin University said: "If is is a fin that's very, very surprising.
"Fin whales are rarely, if ever, seen in the North Sea and are instead found more regularly, but still not commonly, off the Western British Isles.
"Without any more information right now, it's impossible to say why it might have been there or why it died."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-37721845
 
Race to save 100 stranded whales on New Zealand beach
Video:

Volunteers in New Zealand are racing to rescue survivors after more than 400 pilot whales beached themselves.
About 300 stranded whales died overnight at Farewell Spit, on the South Island, in one of the worst such cases the country has seen.

Hundreds of locals and conservation officers have been trying to rescue the survivors since early Friday and formed a human chain to refloat the whales.
Scientists do not know what exactly causes whales to beach themselves.
But it sometimes happens because the whales are old and sick, injured, or make navigational errors particularly along gentle sloping beaches.
Sometimes when one whale is beached, it will send out a distress signal attracting other members of its pod, who then also get stranded by a receding tide.

The conservation department said it had received a report about a possible stranding on Thursday night, but did not launch the rescue operation until Friday morning as it was too dangerous to attempt a rescue in the dark, reported the New Zealand Herald.
Andrew Lamason, the departments regional manager, said it was one of the largest mass beachings recorded in New Zealand.

New Zealand marine mammal charity Project Jonah which is leading efforts to save the whales said a total of 416 whales were stranded.
It said the surviving whales are "being kept cool, calm and comfortable" by medics and members of the public.
Some of the refloated whales tried to swim back to shore, and the human chain was trying to herd them out to deeper waters, said volunteer Ana Wiles.
She told news outlet Stuff that there were "so many fins in the air, no breathing".
"We managed to float quite a few whales off and there were an awful lot of dead ones in the shallows so it was really, really sad."
"One of the nicest things was we managed to float off a couple [of whales] and they had babies and the babies were following," Ms Wiles added.

New Zealand has one of the highest stranding rates in the world, with about 300 dolphins and whales ending up on beaches every year, according to Project Jonah.
Many of these incidents happen at Farewell Spit. Experts say its shallow waters seems to confuse whales and hinder their ability to navigate.

Danny Glover, one of the rescuers at the site, told the BBC it was known as a "whale trap", with its incredible tidal range where the tide may come in as far as 5km (3miles) but with only a 3-metre drop in depth.

In February 2015 about 200 whales beached themselves at the same location, of which at least half died.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-38927416
 
Another pod of whales stranded in New Zealand, bringing total to 650
Video:
Helena Horton, video source ITN
11 February 2017 • 12:19pm

Dozens of weary volunteers have formed a human chain to prevent a pod of stranded whales that washed up off a New Zealand coast from beaching again, as a fresh group became stranded.
Hours after volunteers managed to refloat hundreds of the whales, another pod of 240 swam aground.
This brought the total of stranded pilot whales up to 640 over two days.

Some 335 of the whales beached on Farewell Spit at the tip of the South Island are dead, 220 remain stranded, and 100 are back at sea.

Friday's event was the third-largest whale stranding in history, and New Zealand has one of the highest rates of whale stranding in the world.
Farewell Spit is known locally as a "whale trap" and has been the site of previous mass strandings.

Volunteers were devastated that a new group had become stranded after coming from across the country to help the first pod, many of whom were already dead.
Cheree Morrison, a journalist who visited the whales on Friday, told The Washington Post: "It was just red and pink skies and just whales as far as you could see. It was really haunting.
“Your first instinct was to run to them and help in any way possible."

It is clear the second pod is a fresh set of whales, according to Andrew Lamason, the Department of Conservation Golden Bay operations manager.

etc...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...ales-stranded-new-zealand-bringing-total-650/

:(
 
I was certaim there had been reports of dolphins being washed-up onto beaches in the Scottish Western Isles at exactly the same time as the NZ whales. But I can't find it, anywhere. Very odd....all of it.
 
Ermintrude said:
I was certaim there had been reports of dolphins being washed-up onto beaches in the Scottish Western Isles at exactly the same time as the NZ whales. But I can't find it, anywhere. Very odd....all of it.
Click to expand...
There are stories of a bazillion dolphins alive and swimming round the Western Isles, maybe they have got mixed up in your mind?

This NZ story is awful though. So many. :(
 
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